I. I cannot seem to picture holes in my body like most
people do. That popular metaphor they use to represent
loss. I think of those cardboard boxes that come in different
shapes, displayed in bookstores. Those you don't especially
need but feel like walking away with like they've
always been yours. One resembles an emptied
pool, another like a cake eaten so carefully, the sponge
remains barely intact, imitating a box. And yet, for some
reason, you don't want to put anything in them. They look appealing
as they are, empty. When a friend loses something, maybe a
blown-off cap, I picture a green oblong box neatly caved
in his crown, through his skull. I can't visualize a hole, or
a collapsed floorboard, nor dug-out soil. Assorted colored
boxes in odd shapes, at different locations and time, fitting
flawlessly, like an expensive upgraded sink, through people's
body parts. Sometimes I picture them with a lid on but
they're still visible: an obvious bright patch of cardboard ingrained
in someone's palm, or at one side of another's abdomen.
II. Holes, usually from gunshot, are intentionally plumbed
by nature and open till the other end. True loss, to become
irretrievable, has to have an element of reach and is then
restricted by space—tracing inevitability. You lose a phone
and you search through the rectangle case by your thigh,
and seize nothing, there's only cardboard and skin.
III. You lose someone. But an entire
box the shape of your body can't possibly replace you
or your whole skeletal system would pop out. So you imagine
that loss, an open cocoon, as a single *****—a heart, or
at least half of it. You can't tell whether that side is capable
of beating, but when you knock on it, it sounds the same. You feel that compartment in your chest and it's all solid and compact,
maybe even scratchy. You reach and your hand doesn't go
through. Of course, it never arrived like a bullet. You deliberately
chose to put something in that box. And as much as you
rather wanted to see that bright ear-shaped box empty, leaving
it's contents to imagination, you compromised, thinking
half a heart wouldn't take too much space. And losing
that person, you think back on the day you first got the
box. It was never meant to be filled, you imagine. It looked
better on a shelf behind glass among other colored boxes:
firm as new and all equally fragile, maybe even
bearing a scent or taste. I believe this is one way to cope with loss,
by disassociating it—turning it into a pretty spectacle you'd want to
buy but don't, just another section one passes in a mall.
